Australia won the Plate final at the world series sevens rugby tournament in Wellington, but Kenya stole the headlines with one of the sporting upsets of the year.

On the final day of the tournament Kenya came back from 14-0 down against New Zealand in the Cup semi-final before beating the home side 19-14.

The young Australian side effectively finished fifth of 16 teams on Saturday to round out their best effort of the series.

The Australians won five of six matches, sweeping through pool play unbeaten on Friday - including an upset defeat of Fiji - and comfortably accounting for South Africa (28-12) and the Scots (22-7) in the Plate division.

Their only loss was 24-5 to series leaders New Zealand in the Cup quarter-finals.

Tries to Sean McMahon, Pama Fou and Shannon Walker put Australia 17-0 ahead of Scotland at half-time and Peter Lee sealed the result after the break.

Coach Michael O'Connor was pleased with his youthful team's progress over two days.

"Unfortunately, New Zealand took their A game into that quarter-final and we had no answer to that. Apart from that, it was a good weekend," O'Connor said.

"We've been slow out of the blocks. We've had a bad run of injuries through the first couple of tournaments. And this is a really tough tournament this one - I'm really pleased the boys finished on a high."

Kenya and England contested the Cup final on Saturday, with England prevailing 24-19 in extra time.

But Kenya improved to second in the world series behind New Zealand, who beat Samoa 17-7 in the playoff for third.

Australia remain 10th in the standings after four of nine tournaments.